The invention pertains to a method and system for determining the activity of a person in an environment or in surroundings equipped with electrical appliances. The invention also pertains to an information-recording medium for implementing this method.
The surroundings or environment of a person is the space in which he is moving. Typically it is a building such as a house or an apartment.
The surroundings in which a person moves are equipped with many electrical appliances. In particular, there are many electrical appliances which can be switched over in response to a command from a person, between an ‘on’ mode in which the electrical appliance radiates an electromagnetic field corresponding to a characteristic magnetic signature and an ‘off’ mode in which the electrical appliance does not radiate any electromagnetic field or radiates an electromagnetic field corresponding to a magnetic signature different from the one characterizing the same appliance in ‘on’ mode.
In many applications, it is necessary to monitor the activity of a person in his surroundings. For example, this is useful when the monitored person is an elderly person living alone in his home. Indeed, there are classification charts (for example the AGGIR chart in France) which uses surveys of the person's activity to classify him at a level of dependency. This level of dependency is then used to provide him with appropriate assistance.
Hitherto, a person's activity has been recorded manually by another person, for example a health-care professional. This procedure is impractical and unreliable.
A solution can also be envisaged where this task is simplified by equipping the person's surroundings with numerous sensors such as cameras in order to monitor this person's activity. However, this makes it necessary to implement numerous sensors in this person's surroundings and proves to be highly intrusive.